One tribe moves out and one tribe stays. History broadens, and philosophy shifts, develops a rift, splits one population from the other . . . and a s… - C. J. Cherryh

It represents a real point of consensus we haven’t got now, and a lot of people were willing to give up things they wanted so they could get that agreement. It was a point in human history where all of Union agreed to a set of priorities, and now we’ll either prove that agreement still binds everybody, or we’ll prove somebody with enough guns can run everything at any given moment; and that means no peace, even for them.

There was love, a reliable and real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristan did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristan's both endangering and saving Crissand's life.

It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner...and that was that....They were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that.

What is, is, and that's what we know. What will be is a fine pursuit, but fraught with too damned many possibilities. Fortune-telling, I tell you, is not what it's surmised to be.